Winter Solstice - Glutinous Dumpling = Tong Yuen

English call it Winter Solstice .Some call it Dong Zhi or some Cantonese call it Khor Tong. About 25 years ago, everyone would be busy making the glutinous balls. My grandma would be in the dry kitchen rolling up all the balls. I had no idea what it was, except it was fun to play with and its pink! These days its available from the super market, you can just buy it off shelf. It does save a lot of time. Those usually comes with filling, such as peanut or black sesame paste. What I am about to do now, is the classic Tong Yuen. Plain but handmade with lots of love.

Made about 282 balls today with 400grams glutinous rice flour. I am a slow roller, it took me 4 hours from scratch to finish up rolling the balls. You can’t imagine the aromatic smell of the pandan leaves and ginger when I open the cover of the syrup. It smells delicious. Can’t wait to chill it down and gobble them down.

Ingredients for Dough

1 huge bowl, 1 huge flat plate

2 and half cup Glutinous Rice Flour almost 350grams

1 tablespoon fine sugar.

1/2 Cup + 1 Tablespoon hot boiling water.

Red Food Coloring  – almost 1/4 teaspoon or 3 drops

Ingredients for Syrup

8 cups Water

1 packet rock sugar. 

4 Pandan Leaves/ screwpines

1/4 cut palm sugar

3 Inches ginger, Cut into cubes slices

Prepare  

Fill huge bowl with glutinous rice flour

Add fine sugar mix with flour

Make a puddle hole at the centre

Add hot water and ½ cup water. Mix.

Add water slowly. Do not add all at once.

Stir until everything is mixed up like a dough. Once the flour powder form changed to sticky dough.

Start knead the dough until it does not stick to bowl.

PS, if still tooooooo sticky, sprinkle more flour slowly, bit by bit.

Divide portion to 2. 1 for white, 1 for pink

Add 3 drops red food coloring on 1 dough

Knead colored dough until color smooth out and turn pink

Dust your pan or plate with some flour before you start roll

Pinch out a size of 50cents, or about 4cm

Roll it into a sausage

Pinch it out 1.5cm of the sausage. Roll these into balls.

After its done, set aside for few hours or overnight in room temperature.

Cooking Time

How to Cook Syrup

Half pot water, for me was about 6-8 cups

Add in rock sugar. 

Pandan Leaves/ screwpines

Palm sugar, ginger

Boil 20 -30 minutes until rock sugar melts

Leave it aside to cool

How to Cook Tong Yuen

Boil 1/2 pot of water, add Tong Yuen while water is boiling and bubbling.

Leave pot open. It will float in 1 minute

Let it boil for about 5 minutes

Prepare a bowl of cold water

Scope up the balls from pot to the cold water.

Remove and place it into the sugar syrup

You may serve or keep in fridge for dessert.

Notes

Use of hot water in early stage, to make dough more pliable and chewy rice balls

When the balls float means it is cooked. To be sure, let it float for another 3-5 minutes.

We put the cooked balls into the cold water to make it more chewy. It is what Chinese say, “send it through the cold river.”

You may replace the brown sugar with palm sugar

If you had made extra flour, you may just dust it with flour and keep them in the freezer. Anytime of the day, you may just boil some water and boil them for any dessert.